It should not be like this, to not know, then to know and yet hurt, hurt, hurt.

This is not how stories should end: that special taste, that smooth sensation of the purest truth spreading on the tongue; quickly rushing from behind to smother this sweetness, acridity.

Bitter, bitter chocolate.

Notebook Three

Tanuja

My friend and I went to the temple but she refused to come inside when the priests called us. She said the panditji was not a nice man and she was scared. Scaredy-cat. I went inside to take the laddoo prasad the priests were offering us. One of them filled my hands with the prasad and lifted my frock. He pulled down my chaddi and started pressing me. The other pandit said, ‘Sambhaalo, pakdey jaaongey.’ That’s when I realized the pandit was doing a wrong thing and started crying. But when I reached home I stopped crying because I did not want mumma to know that I had disobeyed her by going to the temple alone.

After that when mumma took me to the temple with her, that priest looked at me and smiled, and he told mumma I was a ‘goon-waali bachi’ and ran his hand over my face. Mumma was happy he called me a virtuous child and said, ‘Panditji ko pranaam karo.’ I did not and she hit me on my head. That other pandit started laughing. I began crying very badly. I would not stop crying and mumma started shaking me at home very hard to tell her what it was, so I told her. She said, ‘Chup kar!’ But I told my dudda when they were planning to have a pooja in my house and call that pandit who laughed at me.

My dudda and his friends went to the temple and beat up the two priests like anything. I was very happy. My dudda said he wanted to go to the police station and send the priests to jail so that they never laughed at little girls again. But my mumma said, ‘Then nobody will marry your daughter.’ Still my dudda is the best dudda in the world.

What the Law Ignores

If Tanuja’s father had taken the matter to the police station, the pandit would have been locked up for a maximum of two years, or fined, or both. Tanuja’s case, whenever it came up in court, would classify as Assault or Criminal Force to Woman with Intent to Outrage her Modesty. Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code.

According to advocate Flavia Agnes of Mumbaii the legal sections invoked in cases of Child Sexual Abuse can be: